Artist Profile: Ducktails

This is New Jersey band Ducktails.

This band exists as a solo vehicle for Matt Mondanile who is better known for his work as the guitarist for shoe-gazer chill-wave band Real Estate.

Sometime during the end of his college run (early 90’s), he tried some weed and decided that naming a band after the animated series Duck Tales would be post-ironic in a hipster sort of way. It wasn’t, but he was such a nice guy, his friends nodded as said, “Sure Matt, that’s a way clever name… go with that.” and then did little eye rolls at each other.

While early work was more experimental and jazz jam orientated, as Mondanile matured, so did his approach to song writing.

Contemporary Ducktails floats along pleasant streams of colorful reverbs and expansive echoes, while the vocals are more a smiling sigh of hushed rumors. An intellectual, almost jazz inspired motive carries a lot of Ducktails. While not immediately exciting or especially challenging, rewards come with finding a familiarity with the subtle mood swings and clever dodges of melody woven through Ducktails music.

There are a handful of albums to check out, but it was one specific song that caught our ear… although it features a guest singer, so it’s technically not Ducktails proper, but rather, Ducktails with Jessa Farkas of Future Shuttle. It’s always a weird twist when you stumble on a band, really feel their song… then find out it’s not exactly the real band and no other music is to be had featuring that dynamic. Shame… because whatever this captures… is on another plane of consciousness.

‘Letter of Intent’ from “The Flower Lane” (2013)

There is a certain, uptown cosmopolitan effect to the whole affair of Ducktails which might be alienating to the more top 40 tastes, but if you can get it… it’s a brooding spiral of tranquil wavelengths designed to lay you back.

‘Don’t Want To Let You Know’ flows like three hours into a smooth Ecstasy trip. This came out on a compilation in 2017.

The last two Ducktails albums, “The Flower Lane” (2013) and “St. Catherine” (2015) were both released on Domino Records which legitimized the project as much more than a side distraction for Mondanile.

‘Headbanging In The Mirror’

The suburbs should be overflowing with ketamine kids finding an easy OD in Ducktails…

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